Understanding Older Adults' Perceptions and Challenges in Using AI-enabled Everyday Technologies

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled everyday technologies could help address age-related challenges like physical impairments and cognitive decline. While recent research studied older adults' experiences with specific AI-enabled products (e.g., conversational agents and assistive robots), it remains unknown how older adults perceive and experience current AI-enabled everyday technologies in general, which could impact their adoption of future AI-enabled products. We conducted a survey study (N=41) and semi-structured interviews (N=15) with older adults to understand their experiences and perceptions of AI. We found that older adults were enthusiastic about learning and using AI-enabled products, but they lacked learning avenues. Additionally, they worried when AI-enabled products outwitted their expectations, intruded on their privacy, or impacted their decision-making skills. Therefore, they held mixed views towards AI-enabled products such as AI, an aid, or an adversary. We conclude with design recommendations that make older adults feel inclusive, secure, and in control of their interactions with AI-enabled products.Comment: The Tenth International Symposium of Chinese CHI (Chinese CHI 2022

Multiple Scale Impacts of Nomad Settlement on Social-Ecological Systems

There are complex interactions and feedback mechanisms between human and natural systems within the coupled social-ecological systems (SESs) (Liu et al. 2007, Li and Li 2012). Human society is the major driving force that changes ecosystem dynamics from local environments to the biosphere (Liu et al. 2007, Kirch 2005). Grasslands, especially the vulnerable arid and semi-arid grassland ecosystems upon which pastoralists live and graze livestock, can be considered as SESs; pastoral activities influence the biophysical environment and set up interactions between the components of these systems (Robinson 2009). In recent years, the ecosystem services provided by grasslands and the problem of poverty in grassland communities have attracted increasing attention from governments and society in China. One response has been the Nomad Settlement Projects (NSPs), implemented as a development strategy in pastoral areas to find solutions to the prevailing ecological and social problems. Nomadic people were provided with houses and farmland in some place, and encouraged to settle down and modernize the “backward” pastoralism. In this paper, we explored the impacts of China’s Nomad Sedentarization Project (NSP) for pastoral areas on coupled social and ecological systems by evaluating the consequences of these projects at different scales (village scale, county scale and catchment scale) undertaken in grassland SESs, including the ecological and social consequences. China\u27s government is now promoting the NSP in large areas of grassland as a solution for ecological restoration and poverty alleviation. To determine the effects of this policy, we conducted in-depth interviews at two of the project\u27s sites and examined the social and ecological systems at village, county, and catchment scales

OperARtistry: An AR-based Interactive Application to Assist the Learning of Chinese Traditional Opera (Xiqu) Makeup

Chinese Traditional Opera (Xiqu) is an important type of intangible cultural heritage and one key characteristic of Xiqu is its visual effects on face achieved via makeup. However, Xiqu makeup process, especially the eye-area makeup process, is complex and time-consuming, which poses a learning challenge for potential younger inheritors. We introduce OperARtistry, an interactive application based on Augmented Reality (AR) that offers in-situ Xiqu makeup guidance for beginners. Our application provides a step-by-step guide for Xiqu eye-area makeup, incorporating AR effects at each stage. Furthermore, we conducted an initial user study (n=6) to compare our approach with existing video-based tutorials to assess the effectiveness and usefulness of our approach. Our findings show that OperARtisty helped participants achieve high-quality eye-area makeup effects with less learning time.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, In Proceedings of The Eleventh International Symposium of Chinese CHI (Chinese CHI 2023

Experimental Study on the Influence of KDL Physical and Health Education Curriculum on Primary School Students\u27 Physical Fitness

Physical and Health Education Curriculum (KDL) is a curriculum based on China\u27s Sports and Health Curriculum Standards and China\u27s Health Sports Curriculum Model. This study aims to explore the influence of KDL on primary school students\u27 physical fitness. A total of 91 primary school students participated in this study, including 47 in the experimental group and 44 in the control group. The experiment lasted for 18 weeks. During the experiment, the PE teacher of experimental group used KDL to teach, with specific requirements: (1) The activity time of each class was more than 75%, and the intensity, measured with average heart rates, was above 140-160 beats/min; (2) Each class had about 10 minutes of physical exercise; and (3) each class focused on activities and competitions. The control group was given routine physical education lessons without intervention. Before and after the experiment, both groups participated in physical fitness tests, including 50-meter running, vital capacity, seat forward flexion, and 1-minute rope jumping. SPSS was used to analyze the physical fitness of both groups. Before the experiment, there was no significant difference in physical fitness between the two groups. After the experiment, the experiment group outperformed the control group in the 1-minute rope skipping (t = 10.77, p \u3c 0.05) and exceled in the vital capacity (t = 0.04, p \u3c 0.05). There was no significant difference in other physical fitness tests between the two groups. This study shows that KDL curriculum has a significant positive impact on physical fitness of primary school students, mainly reflected in vital capacity and 1-minute rope skipping. The effect may be related to the high time on task and appropriate intensity advocated by KDL curriculum. We recommend KDL physical curriculum to be promoted in primary and secondary schools

Communication in Immersive Social Virtual Reality: A Systematic Review of 10 Years' Studies

As virtual reality (VR) technologies have improved in the past decade, more research has investigated how they could support more effective communication in various contexts to improve collaboration and social connectedness. However, there was no literature to summarize the uniqueness VR provided and put forward guidance for designing social VR applications for better communication. To understand how VR has been designed and used to facilitate communication in different contexts, we conducted a systematic review of the studies investigating communication in social VR in the past ten years by following the PRISMA guidelines. We highlight current practices and challenges and identify research opportunities to improve the design of social VR to better support communication and make social VR more accessible.Comment: Chinese CHI '22: The Tenth International Symposium of Chinese CHI (Chinese CHI 2022

Synapse: Interactive Guidance by Demonstration with Trial-and-Error Support for Older Adults to Use Smartphone Apps

As smartphones are widely adopted, mobile applications (apps) are emerging to provide critical services such as food delivery and telemedicine. While bring convenience to everyday life, this trend may create barriers for older adults who tend to be less tech-savvy than young people. In-person or screen sharing support is helpful but limited by the help-givers' availability. Video tutorials can be useful but require users to switch contexts between watching the tutorial and performing the corresponding actions in the app, which is cumbersome to do on a mobile phone. Although interactive tutorials have been shown to be promising, none was designed for older adults. Furthermore, the trial-and-error approach has been shown to be beneficial for older adults, but they often lack support to use the approach. Inspired by both interactive tutorials and trial-and-error approach, we designed an app-independent mobile service, \textit{Synapse}, for help-givers to create a multimodal interactive tutorial on a smartphone and for help-receivers (e.g., older adults) to receive interactive guidance with trial-and-error support when they work on the same task. We conducted a user study with 18 older adults who were 60 and over. Our quantitative and qualitative results show that Synapse provided better support than the traditional video approach and enabled participants to feel more confident and motivated. Lastly, we present further design considerations to better support older adults with trial-and-error on smartphones